Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Connecting Your Class Through Augmented Reality

There are so many moments in a school day where students show the best side of themselves.  And even with any best educator’s efforts of sharing and celebrating what happened that day with parents, it’s not the same as being there.  There are a few solutions to this problem that 4th grade teacher, Jan Johnson, has been working on to help share what is going on in her classroom. 

One way is an augmented reality app called Aurasma.  Augmented reality uses a type of technology that creates a computerized layer over any common object.  Using the app, the common layer comes to life revealing what was hidden there.   

Check out how Aurasma works in a variety of different ways.


During a recent unit on biographies, Mrs. Johnson had her students record themselves sharing the biographies that they wrote.  This was not only a great way to share with parents what students are studying, it also gave the students fluency practice, as well creating a record of their reading skills.  This also gave students an opportunity to publish their work and practice presenting to an online audience.

So you may be wondering how this worked?  Aurasma uses the different stages of the project to create layers to make the augmented reality work.  The top layer, the students created a video themselves reading their biography.  Then, they printed a picture of the person who they were studying their life’s history.  They used this image as the trigger image, which serves as the bottom layer.   When you hold the app on top of the trigger image, the video of the student biographer pops up sharing the story of the person.  Parents, grandparents, and other family members living anywhere can view the recording of the student by using the trigger image, even by viewing it on a computer.  Mrs. Johnson shared the Aurasma through an online student portfolio system called SeeSaw.

Curious as to how to get this all to work?  Check out next week’s blog post where we walk through how you can get Aurasma set-up in your classroom.

-Contribution from Amber Bridge, Grant Wood AEA Technology Consultant. Want to share what is going on in your class or collaborate on a technology project? Feel free to contact me.